Long before research, teaching and thoughts of tenure filled Paul C. Harris’ workdays, he was an eighth-grade boy who loved baseball and basketball. But after falling short of the honor roll that same year, his father took away the privilege of playing baseball in the spring.Now, twenty-plus years later, the University of Virginia professor is focusing his research on the academic performance of African-American male student athletes, and he's conducting the second phase of a study at Charlottesville High School.
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Maggie Hollifield's obituary describes a camp-loving 10-year-old who died from a "tragic accident" in her Crozet home. Albemarle Commonwealth's Attorney Denise Lunsford agrees and will not seek indictments against the girl's 13-year-old brother nor her parents for the fatal May 21 shooting.
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Worst week for the Western 29 bypass: The Washington Post's Robert McCartney slams the project in his June 15 column, "Wasteful Charlottesville highway highlights problem with Bob McDonnell’s road plans," and notes that the controversial $245-million, six-mile road inspired John Grisham's new novel, The Activist.
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By Richard Roeper **
"Ah, so that's where Superman comes from!"— something nobody will say after watching Man of Steel.
Can we just please hit the ground running with the next superhero reboot instead of going back to the origins story and a familiar villain?
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By Retired Brigadier General David R. IrvineThe Convention Against Torture, which President Reagan signed 25 years ago, states "[n]o exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture." Reagan would be disappointed that many Americans reject that view.
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Local photographer Ed Roseberry is excited and a little anxious. After eight decades shooting film— producing an estimated 200,000 photos that have won him national awards and will soon form a special collection at UVA— he's recently made the leap to digital and has spent the last two months experimenting with his new camera, a Nikon D-7100.
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Hi, Carolyn:
Our 24-year-old daughter, "Mary," is getting married this August.
My mother is 84, a hard-core feminist and atheist. She views religion as an oppressor of females, and hates anything to do with church. My two daughters are somewhat religious, and the groom and his family are Protestants.
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Three days after the election, city council candidate Wes Bellamy— who tied with Bob Fenwick and eventually lost by a handful of votes— converses with media following the count.
~Commentator Bill Emory puts up a new photo nearly every day at billemory.com/blog.
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While most of us know someone who can score killer designer duds at stores like Goodwill, Salvation Army, and the SPCA Rummage Store on Preston Avenue, successful thrift shopping can be a hit-or-miss endeavor, requiring regular visits, eagle eyes and a fashionista's knowledge of brands if you want to find the gems tucked among the junk.
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Something was missing for listeners of WINA's "Charlottesville Right Now" tuning in to the AM station since late last week: Coy Barefoot, the show's longtime host. Here's a hint. Try FM on your dial.
Barefoot announced he was leaving the show he created in 2006 and going to an FM competitor— WCHV 107.5 FM— on his Sunday morning Newsplex show, Inside Charlottesville, which is also the name of his new radio show.
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Three days after the June 11 Democratic primary and an unprecedented tie for one of two City Council nominations, Wes Bellamy and Bob Fenwick learned who will join incumbent Kristin Szakos on the ticket in November. The results came down to provisional-ballot casters, who broke the 1,088-vote tie and put Fenwick ahead by five.
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The eastern sidewalk of the Belmont Bridge may be closed, but crowds still stream across the western side.
~Commentator Bill Emory puts up a new photo nearly every day at billemory.com/blog.
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As a nurse anesthetist, Sharlene McNeish frees people from experiencing pain, but in a new side venture as pizza maker she hopes to deliver the pleasure that comes from eating authentic Neapolitan pizza. About a year ago she bought an outdoor wood-fired oven for her home in Troy, Virginia, wanting to bake fresh bread for her family. She even took bread making classes. She eventually began roasting vegetables, chicken, and making pizzas in the oven, and the compliments from friends and family started rolling in.
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By Richard Roeper
Early on in Richard Linklater's Before Midnight, we see an extended sequence more daring and in some ways just as thrilling as anything we're likely to experience in any 2013 movie about superhumans who can fly or futuristic galaxies filled with glorious and dangerous sights.
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Two days after a 21-year-old Crozet man was shot dead by an Albemarle police officer on June 8, officials finally released his name. Neither Albemarle police nor Virginia State Police, which is investigating the case, responded to a request for the name of the officer who used lethal force.
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Normally the light-turnout primary race for City Council would have been decided Tuesday night shortly after the polls closed at 7pm. Instead, an unprecedented tie for second place has candidates Wes Bellamy and Bob Fenwick still unsure who will be on the Democratic ticket in the fall, and they may not know until noon Friday.
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Since the 1920s, Charlottesville's purest water has flowed downhill directly from the Sugar Hollow Reservoir via a 13.5-mile cast-iron pipeline. The mountain water is so pure, in fact, that the treatment plant into which it flows has required minimal treatment. Those days may be over.
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Giant photos in trees on the Downtown Mall signal the Look3 Festival of the Photograph, which starts June 12. Photographer Tim Laman captured a male red bird of paradise in Batanta Island, Indonesia. The male's downward position is part of the mating ritual, in which his tail feathers form a perfect arc.
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Worst week for the Fourth Amendment: Sans search warrants, Verizon turns over millions of phone records to the National Security Agency, the Guardian reports. Also without search warrants, the NSA is mining data from the servers of Internet giants like Google, FaceBook, and Microsoft in a top-secret program called PRISM, the Washington Post reports.
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Gregory Allen Rosson, 21, lay dead in a yard along U.S. 250 on Afton Mountain for about nine hours after he was shot early June 8 by Albemarle police, according to a witness. "They didn't have to kill that man," says the resident, in whose front yard the shooting took place.
Albemarle police responded to a 911 call about a domestic disturbance at 2:16am Saturday, June 8, according to a release from Virginia State Police, which is investigating the incident, the second county police shooting in two weeks.
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Albemarle police responding to a call about a domestic disturbance on Rockfish Gap Turnpike around 2:30am Saturday, June 8, were involved in a fatal shooting, according to a Virginia State Police release. Police closed U.S. 250 between Route 151 and the top of Afton Mountain, and it remained closed until around noon.
Virginia State Police, which are investigating the shooting, say the call came from a residence.
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As a Charlottesville voter, I just wanted to say thank you for this cover story about the Virginia Democratic primary [May 30, "Dem duke-out: Candidate face off in June primary"].
It's surprisingly hard to find information on the internet about the elections, specifically the candidates and their platforms, but also simple things like the dates. Your story has been very helpful in making up my mind about who to vote for, when I wasn't going to vote at all before.
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UVA grad and Charlottesville native Eric Prum, creator of a Mason jar cocktail shaker, has what could be the perfect gift for Father's Day: a high-end cocktail kit that looks like something out of Williams-Sonoma. Which it is.
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By Richard Roeper
The first few scenes of Now You See Me deliver the promise of the best film about magic since the release of two meticulously crafted and thoroughly entertaining 2006 films: The Prestige and The Illusionist.
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Biggest abduction case: Former UVA employee Matthew Rene Beaulieu, 27, pleads guilty to abduction with intent to defile May 27. He grabbed an 18-year-old UVA student, who fought him off and escaped, November 9 near Runk Dining Hall. According to K. Burnell Evans in the Progress, Beaulieu admitted to police he was tired of being alone after a breakup and wanted to make a woman "feel pain like he feels it." A butcher knife, dog collar, and nylon restraints were found in his car. Beaulieu could face life in prison and will be sentenced August 7.
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Jackson Landers stands over his stove. Spatula in hand, flanked by his two eager children, he stirs the contents of the saucepan thoughtfully.
“It’s olive oil and Old Bay,” Landers says. “I was going for a traditional blue crab kind of feel.”
Crabs, however, aren’t on the menu.
Researchers’ fascination, fruit growers’ nightmare, and naturalists’ phenomenon, cicadas are now, apparently, dinner.
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Juan Cervantes was cleaning up from a Memorial Day cookout at his house on Birdwood Court when he heard people "yelling and screaming at each other," he says.
He approached the street from his yard. "Someone said, 'I'm going to shoot you,'" recounts Cervantes, and then there was one shot. He called 911.
Birdwood Court is a quiet Charlottesville neighborhood of attractive duplexes off the U.S. 250 bypass near McIntire Road. Cervantes, who's lived there nine years, said his son rode his scooter on the street and saw a police car— an Albemarle County police cruiser.
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UVA Professor Glen Bull was found not guilty of stealing a woman's Prada bag from the Commonwealth Skybar last summer under circumstances the judge called "very, very suspicious," and even Bull couldn't explain why he didn't tell the bartender he'd found what he thought was a forgotten bag, rather than take it out of the restaurant.
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Witness-less: Curry prof's grand larceny charge reduced
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Just days after Chris Dumler fended off a petition to remove him from the Albemarle Board of Supervisors and vowed to continue representing the Scottsville District, the defiant supe resigned from the board at its June 5 meeting, effective immediately.
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Dumler stays, fires back: Judge says not enough evidence to remove
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Former Keswick Boy Scout leader David Brian Watkins, 50, was in court June 4 to enter pleas to two counts of rape and one count of forcible sodomy of a child younger than 13, assaults that allegedly happened in 2005, according to the indictments.
The slight, bearded, prison-stripes-wearing Watkins answered in a firm voice, "Not guilty," to each of the three charges in Albemarle Circuit Court. Watkins waived a jury trial, and the date was set for December 17.
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Last summer, the tanned and outspoken hedge fund billionaire and UVA alum Paul Tudor Jones caused a stir by penning an op/ed supporting UVA Rector Helen Dragas' attempt to oust UVA President Teresa Sullivan, a failed coup that knowledgeable sources say he may have even helped orchestrate.
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In his May 23 Essay, "Barnum's Beaming: The greatest bypass on Earth!", Randy Salzman is incensed with the "bait and switch" tactics employed by the Skanska-Branch Corp. and VDOT in the "design/build" process for constructing the Western Bypass. He should be. So am I. To initially accept an obviously inferior, low-ball proposal, then turn around and modify it without an open competition is outrageous. But, to translate this outrage into an excuse to not build the Western Bypass at all makes no sense.
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Three years ago, hip-hop dancer Matt Steffania was a wildly popular instructor at ACAC and at dance studios around Charlottesville. Now he’s teaching and working all over the world with artists including Chris Brown, Eva, Snoop Dog and Lil' Wayne. Most recently, his raw talent caught the attention of American Idol host Ryan Seacrest, whose website picked Steffanina and his Youtube videos for a contest.
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